Speaker 1: Bull's coverage and jumping right to it, which you know,
Speaker 1: when you've got twenty minutes of time on Saturday morning
Speaker 1: between five and five thirty, you can't screw around.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: Otherwise, Gary Jeff, the news team will open fire if
Speaker 1: and when they're paying attention.
Speaker 2: Am I correct?
Speaker 1: Any?
Speaker 2: Yes, you are correct? Okay, good, we got that straight.
Speaker 2: Gary Jeff will get very angry at me and start
Speaker 2: cursing and using things I can't sail on the air.
Speaker 1: That's right, even though under our brock. Okay, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1: John Navarro joins me. He is a biologist with the
Speaker 1: Ohio Divisional Wildlife under ODNR and has an area of
Speaker 1: expertise which is aquatic diverse diversity conservation management.
Speaker 2: And that's a lot for five am in the morning, John,
Speaker 2: I gotta tell you, yeah.
Speaker 3: It is. So.
Speaker 1: The article came out two weeks back about the aquatic
Speaker 1: habitat biologist and being taxed with new missions.
Speaker 2: Uh, they are under your purview.
Speaker 1: So give us an idea what this means, because you know,
Speaker 1: God does I do know quite a few young men
Speaker 1: and women that we are interested in this area of study,
Speaker 1: and so you know, I want to get them a
Speaker 1: little born to work with here since things are changing
Speaker 1: out there pretty quickly.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 4: So yeah, So we have a new position. It's called
Speaker 4: Aquatic Habitat Biologists, and the idea of it is the
Speaker 4: divisional Wildlife manages all species, not just what we pursue
Speaker 4: with hook and bullet, so which is still our core
Speaker 4: core audience, our core constituency, but we also manage critters
Speaker 4: that people don't pursue, and some of them are are
Speaker 4: very rare and cool. So we thought, with the interest
Speaker 4: in aquatic diversity trustrialsity, that maybe we should have this
Speaker 4: expertise in house. So our staff are all versed in
Speaker 4: sport fish, but we really were lacking the expertise in
Speaker 4: the other critters. So that's what this position is. It's
Speaker 4: going to work with the non game uh species, you know, fish, muscles,
Speaker 4: that kind of thing, and they're going to become our
Speaker 4: in house experts. So we have three of them right now,
Speaker 4: one in south west Ohio, one in Central Ohio, and
Speaker 4: one in Northeast Ohio. And we're looking to hire two more,
Speaker 4: one in northwest Ohio and one in Southeast Ohio, so
Speaker 4: eventually we'll have one in each district that will provide
Speaker 4: expertise in aquatic diversity.
Speaker 1: So do they report to the district office or do
Speaker 1: they report to Columbus specifically?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's interesting. So our district operations are not managed
Speaker 4: by me, so they do report to the district manager,
Speaker 4: but I provide programmatic direction.
Speaker 2: Okay, fantastic.
Speaker 1: So where did you get the biological information in the past? Uh?
Speaker 1: Even though I know that you know staff wise, you know,
Speaker 1: every all of your all of your people know a
Speaker 1: lot about a lot when it comes down to it,
Speaker 1: you know, So where did that come from?
Speaker 2: Initially? So the idea that I know, I mean the
Speaker 2: you know this.
Speaker 1: If this type of biologist was on staff, where was
Speaker 1: that information coming from?
Speaker 2: Biological?
Speaker 4: So right, So we have a really good relationship with
Speaker 4: with species experts out there. So like if there was
Speaker 4: a muscle question, I would go to the folks at
Speaker 4: os U, yeah, or hellbenders. We have someone that we
Speaker 4: pay through OSU to do our hellbender research and all
Speaker 4: the other amphibians and reptiles. So basically, if there was
Speaker 4: a question I couldn't answer, I would go to our partners.
Speaker 3: Outside, which is fine, but I really, I really thought,
Speaker 3: and Chief Wecker thought, and Todd Haynes, our assistant chief,
Speaker 3: thought it would be really good to have that.
Speaker 4: Expertise in house. So so that's where the direction we went.
Speaker 4: And so these people will be well versed on everything diversity.
Speaker 1: Okay, great, well, and of course your universities are spitting
Speaker 1: out the people that would be uh. I guess you know,
Speaker 1: qualified through education for positions like this.
Speaker 2: So I it makes more sense.
Speaker 1: Than a lot of things I've heard out there. So
Speaker 1: John Navarro, you sit tight. We got to hit a
Speaker 1: short break, Chip Hart, I guess John Navarro with Ohio
Speaker 1: Divisional Wildlife, Big Outdoors News Radio seven hundred WLW Cincinnati,
Speaker 1: LW Cincinnati, Chip Hart, and my guest is John Navarro.
Speaker 2: And if you hang around long enough.
Speaker 1: Gary Jeff Walker and his cast of characters will be
Speaker 1: up at the afternoon news who Who on the at
Speaker 1: the bottom of the hour after the bottom and taking
Speaker 1: you at nine am. And Michael k Allen likely with
Speaker 1: his rants and raves across the world, his worldview of things,
Speaker 1: which is it's quite fractured anyway, but no, he's you know,
Speaker 1: you're talking about the best radio on Saturday in Cincinnati
Speaker 1: between five am and noon for crying out loud, So anyway,
Speaker 1: John Navarro, Divisional Wildlife moving to the sturgeon stocking program,
Speaker 1: which I I think is very cool. I've you know,
Speaker 1: never had the opportunity to like outlast. It's a big
Speaker 1: deal to fish for Okay, I guess what the Columbia
Speaker 1: River and some other places like that, and it was
Speaker 1: native originally to to I guess Lake Erie. And so
Speaker 1: tell me where we're at at this point in time.
Speaker 1: And is that a different I guess a different species
Speaker 1: of sturgeon.
Speaker 4: No, So the species we're talking about are lake sturgeon,
Speaker 4: which are native to the Great Lakes. But because of
Speaker 4: the building of dams, water quality issues, and persecution. To
Speaker 4: be honest with you, they weren't very well loved back
Speaker 4: in the eighteen hundreds that they basically pretty much disappeared
Speaker 4: from Lake Erie. So water quality improvements through the Clean
Speaker 4: Water Act, which is fifty years old, right, a great
Speaker 4: piece of legislation. It's a amazing how the water quality
Speaker 4: in Ohio and around the country has improved. So we're
Speaker 4: at a point where we felt that we could reintroduce
Speaker 4: lake sturgeons. So we started on the Mammie River in
Speaker 4: twenty eighteen with a partnership with the Toledo Zoo. So
Speaker 4: Toledo Zoo is raising half the fish, and half of
Speaker 4: them come from Genoa Fish Hatchery in Wisconsin. And the
Speaker 4: idea is we wanted to look if it's important for
Speaker 4: these fish to imprint with the local water so they
Speaker 4: know how to come back to their natal water body. So, okay,
Speaker 4: half of them are raised on Mommy water and half
Speaker 4: of them are raised on Wisconsin water. They all get
Speaker 4: released at the same time, and it'll take a while
Speaker 4: because they are long lived. You know, they'll live to
Speaker 4: be one hundred years old. They'll get six feet long,
Speaker 4: two hundred pounds, so they're slow to mature. It'll be
Speaker 4: a while before we see the results of that study.
Speaker 4: All the fish have a pit tag in them, which
Speaker 4: is a little transmitter the size of a grain of rice,
Speaker 4: and you can detect it with a wand And so
Speaker 4: we're going to be releasing those for the next twenty
Speaker 4: plus years, trying to establish a population in the Maumee River.
Speaker 4: What's really exciting is this year we added the Sandusky River,
Speaker 4: and most exciting was the Cuyahoga River. We released Lake
Speaker 4: sturgeon this year and so at that release thank you
Speaker 4: Cleveland Metro Parks for hosting the event. Sure the backdrop
Speaker 4: was the Cleveland or was the Cuyahoga River, which fifty
Speaker 4: years ago was on fire.
Speaker 2: Now we all know that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, and was the catalyst for the Clean Water Act.
Speaker 4: So past forward fifty years to this year, we're releasing
Speaker 4: an endangered fish into the Cuyahoga River in downtown Cleveland.
Speaker 4: So it's just amazing.
Speaker 1: It is amazing. So what do they what's it? What
Speaker 1: do they primarily feed on?
Speaker 4: So they're a bottom feeder, so I think they're so cool.
Speaker 4: They're prehistoric. They're around when the dinosaurs are around, and
Speaker 4: they look like a shark, so they kind of look
Speaker 4: intimidating when they're six feet long, but they don't worry.
Speaker 4: They're not going to eat you. They eat stuff off
Speaker 4: the bottom, so aquatic insects, you know, small muscles, maybe
Speaker 4: fish every once in a while. So they're a bottom
Speaker 4: feeder so that's mainly what they eat.
Speaker 2: So will they eat the zebra muscle?
Speaker 4: I'm sure if they come across it, they'll.
Speaker 2: They'll eat it.
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, hell, were there any pre existing like a
Speaker 1: blake sturgeon?
Speaker 4: There is relic populations in Lake Erie. Yeah, there is
Speaker 4: still a population in Wisconsin, and the Detroit River actually
Speaker 4: has them to So that's where we got our eggs
Speaker 4: for the production.
Speaker 2: Well, I got it.
Speaker 1: I got to believe that you know, through the H
Speaker 1: two Ohio and the removal of you know, certain dams
Speaker 1: on certain rivers that maybe you know, we're in that
Speaker 1: Lake Erie watershed, that that that's a big positive too
Speaker 1: for their I guess migratory ability to.
Speaker 2: To uh you know, to to to breed and so
Speaker 2: on and so forth. So John sid tight, we got
Speaker 2: to hit a break.
Speaker 1: Come back, we'll talk more about uh, well, we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about the invasive carp Lake Erie tributaries. Chip Hart,
Speaker 1: John Navarro, Ohio Divisional Wildlife, The Big Outdoors News Radio,
Speaker 1: seven hundred w l W, Cincinnati.
Speaker 2: Back in the moment, go seven hundred w l W, The.
Speaker 1: Big Outdoors News Radio, seven hundred w l W, Cincinnati.
Speaker 1: I am excited about this subject matter, Danny, Okay.
Speaker 2: Yes, And and because you.
Speaker 1: Know, not only our sport fish cool well, we love
Speaker 1: to catch them, but also you know the other native
Speaker 1: fish and critters that make up this whole ecosystem, and
Speaker 1: Ohio's it, you know, we're in pretty good shape. Okay,
Speaker 1: nothing against our neighbors, because you're all listening to me too.
Speaker 2: You guys got cool stuff too.
Speaker 1: We'll get to it if I get somebody on the
Speaker 1: phone from your Department and Natural Resources, which is helpful.
Speaker 1: So John Navarro, Divisional Wildlife. Uh, let's let's kind of
Speaker 1: get on get on to These are subjects that I've
Speaker 1: been wanting to talk to somebody about for quite some time.
Speaker 1: So you've kind of fulfilled the whole need here the
Speaker 1: invasive carp and in terms of the Lake Erie watershed.
Speaker 1: So where do we stand right now? We've heard about,
Speaker 1: you know, the Chicago River and all that. Of course,
Speaker 1: the Mommy River goes over in Indiana, starts in Indiana,
Speaker 1: right yeah, so.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So invasive carp mainly, the ones we're really worried
Speaker 4: about are the big head and silver carp. They're filter
Speaker 4: feeders and they can out compete our young native fish
Speaker 4: and they've shown to be pretty impactful where they get
Speaker 4: a high population. Fortunately, in Ohio they have not gotten
Speaker 4: to a population size yet that we think is going
Speaker 4: to impact natives. But I think it's only a matter
Speaker 4: of time, and once you have an invasive species get established,
Speaker 4: it's extremely hard to eradicate them. So the o High
Speaker 4: River Watershed we're trying our best to keep the population down,
Speaker 4: but we're really worried about the Great Lakes and for
Speaker 4: Ohio Lake Erie, so we're doing a lot of work
Speaker 4: to keep them from going from the Ohigh River Watershed
Speaker 4: to the Lake Erie Watershed. One of the main things
Speaker 4: is there's two hydraulic connection points where they could cross
Speaker 4: over one an acrony in one south of Lode Io
Speaker 4: High and we've already closed the one on the High
Speaker 4: Ohio Erie Canal and akron through raising the elevation between
Speaker 4: the two watersheds. Okay, when it flood. When it floods,
Speaker 4: they can't go back and forth. And we're working south
Speaker 4: of Lodi for the Little Killbuck Creek project to construct
Speaker 4: a burm, which we completed this year for phase one,
Speaker 4: But the idea is to separate that watershed so they
Speaker 4: can't get into Lake Erie.
Speaker 1: Well, that's a monumental tay ask before we go on.
Speaker 1: I know you mentioned well, let's just circle back to
Speaker 1: the to the sturgeon stocking. You mentioned that we have
Speaker 1: another location in fact that impacts the Ohio River Valley.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
Speaker 4: What's really exciting is this year, in partnership with h
Speaker 4: Ohio Rivers Program and OSU, we released thirty lake sturgeon
Speaker 4: in Circleville at our Richard's Boat Ramp and so late
Speaker 4: you think a lake sturgeon, you think Lake Erie, but
Speaker 4: they were. They are native to the Ohio River Watershed
Speaker 4: and the Mississippi River watershed. So we're working to establish
Speaker 4: a population in the Sciota River. And this year we
Speaker 4: release thirty radio tagged fish. So these fish have an
Speaker 4: actual tag in it that releases a signal that can
Speaker 4: get picked up on receivers that we have laid out
Speaker 4: from Columbus down to the Ohio River.
Speaker 1: The mouth got you, I would imagine if an angler
Speaker 1: caught a sturgeon, regardless if it's tagg or not, that
Speaker 1: they need to report.
Speaker 4: It, report it and release it. Please.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 4: And we do have some shovel nose sturgeon which is
Speaker 4: a close relative, and we get reports of fishermen catching
Speaker 4: those and they're very good about taking a picture and
Speaker 4: releasing it, so they're doing the right thing.
Speaker 2: Good.
Speaker 1: Now back to the to the big head, the silver
Speaker 1: carp In terms of Lake Erie, have they actually gotten
Speaker 1: in the lake.
Speaker 4: So when you say invasive carp, if there's four speces
Speaker 4: to talking about the big head silver black carp, which
Speaker 4: haven't made it up the Mississippi River to us yet,
Speaker 4: and then the grass cart and the grass carp does
Speaker 4: have a reproducing population in the Sandusky and Maumee River
Speaker 4: and we're working very hard to eradicate that population in
Speaker 4: partnership with the University of Toledo that team up north
Speaker 4: there DNR. I can't it's it's that week. I can't
Speaker 4: even mention their name, Okay, but we do partner with
Speaker 4: them closely on trying to eradicate this population in the
Speaker 4: western basin of the lake here.
Speaker 1: Well, John, how can people find out more of the
Speaker 1: about the invasive carp in terms of like just go
Speaker 1: to do a search on wild Ohio dot gov.
Speaker 4: But be sure yep, yep, yep, and they can find
Speaker 4: all kinds of information.
Speaker 1: All right, great, Well, let's and I appreciate your time
Speaker 1: this morning. All good stuff, and see I keep up on.
Speaker 2: Things with you.
Speaker 1: Okay, you did you know as far as what's happening
Speaker 1: out there, So that's fantastic. Well, listen, have a great
Speaker 1: holiday season and catch up with you like fish Ohio.
Speaker 4: Okay, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Thanks John with that, we got to hit a break
Speaker 1: Chip Hart the Big Outdoors News Radio seven hundred WLW, Cincinnati.
Speaker 2: Back in the moment your tuned to news radio seven
Speaker 2: hundred w LW. We're back, Danny, Thank you.
Speaker 1: I know, I got a couple of minutes and you know,
Speaker 1: Sir Gary Jeff's gonna blow the horn on me.
Speaker 2: And that's it tough.
Speaker 1: You know, oh if you have questions about anything that
Speaker 1: I've talked about, just called Gary Jeff.
Speaker 2: Okay, He'll sold me out of my studio. I know,
Speaker 2: I know. So what do we have? What do we have?
Speaker 1: There's a lot of people up in arms that come
Speaker 1: to Ohio to hunt as non residents, and you know,
Speaker 1: see it through social media, but you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of a reciprocal thing. You know, if Indiana, Kentucky
Speaker 1: or West Virginia charges a certain amount to go deer
Speaker 1: hunt over there where, they've tried to bring Ohio commensurate
Speaker 1: with those neighboring states. So you know, the non resident
Speaker 1: either sex deer permit in Ohio cost you know, two
Speaker 1: hundred and eighteen bucks and some change. And then your
Speaker 1: non resident hunting licenses is one hundred and eighty one dollars.
Speaker 1: So that's just what it is to hunt Ohio. If
Speaker 1: I go to Kentucky or Indiana, it's going to cost
Speaker 1: me the same thing.
Speaker 2: So it was.
Speaker 1: A prudent decision to be made. So you know, you
Speaker 1: can still come hunt here, and I can still go
Speaker 1: and hunt there. So that's just wherever we happen to
Speaker 1: stand and circling back. You know, we had that report
Speaker 1: that was reported that we had a grizzly bear that
Speaker 1: attacked a group of school children and teachers on a
Speaker 1: walking trail in British Columbia, Canada and eleven people injured.
Speaker 1: But so, uh, I don't know what's but that's the
Speaker 1: current news on that. And apparently there were multiple bears
Speaker 1: in Ballved but I've had no update to date. And
Speaker 1: go look for a story about a bald eagle that
Speaker 1: dropped a cat through a driver's windshield in North Carolina,
Speaker 1: causing a car accident. So another fun story only in
Speaker 1: North Carolina, I guess. So you know, I guess they
Speaker 1: just watched it fall out of the sky, you know,
Speaker 1: better than fish.
Speaker 2: Anyway, I'm out of here.
Speaker 1: Gary Jeff is next to the Big Outdoors News Radio
Speaker 1: seven hundred WLW SIN standing be safe in the woods,
Speaker 1: safe on the water, and safe in that tree stand